the Walnut Diary

After they released me from hospital Bet took the mower and cut three trails to the woods through the long grass.  Then she made us walk them a couple of times per day.  Last week I added to the cumulative distance by mowing around another eight-acre field. The roads through the woodlot make fine walking as well at this time of year.  I look forward to the trails now, though Bet and Taffy don’t always come along.

By the time we visited the chief heart specialist at the Kingston Heart Unit last week, my numbers were all very good.  He wheeled out a new diabetes pill which protects against heart attacks and kidney failure with only the occasional amputated foot if you don’t drink enough water.

There’s a sort of all-or-nothing culture in this department and none of them seem to have met a diuretic they didn’t like.

Then came the stress test. I’d never tried a treadmill before and found the nurse’s cheerleader attitude confusing.  

For months everyone had programmed me: “We call your heart condition the widow-maker. Do nothing strenuous or you may die without warning, or at the very least tear your chest apart.”  The entire staff of Kingston General Hospital was on about this.  Family, friends and the homework reading material sang the same hymns.  

Then this young heretic wanted me to knock myself out to impress her.

There was no upper limit on her demands.

I hadn’t seen yearning like this since I told the Liberal Party I would only send them money if they did NOT call me to ask for it.  

That works, by the way.

So I left some room for improvement on the next stress test, but the lungs, legs and refurbished heart worked fine for almost six minutes, flat out, as the nurse increased the treadmill’s speed and slope.  This is a non-athelete speaking here, remember.

My offer to take any cancellation at all got the physiotherapy moved from late February to early November. I argued there isn’t much one can do around a farm tractor to prepare it for winter snow removal if one can only lift 15 pounds. 

The first session is Thursday at Hotel Dieu.

In summary, I’m far from back to normal in strength and flexibility, but I don’t need pain killers any more, the healing’s going well, and blood sugar and hemoglobin are good. 

Apart from occasional trouble dragging the appropriate noun out of memory while speaking, my brain functions reasonably well.  I heard Bet tell someone one day that my disposition is good.

The lazy nouns may not be a bad tradeoff for a 20 lb. weight loss.

It’s a relief to drive again.

And I still can’t play the piano. 

UPDATE: December 3, 2017

Yesterday I helped Les Parrott cut dead ash trees on his lot. I felled most of them with his saw while he ran the winch on my tractor to add a reasonable margin of accuracy and safety to the operation. Today, after our walk in the woods, I decided to plant walnuts. I gathered a five gallon pail of nuts from the orchard and spent a pleasant two hours interplanting the seeds among pines in the shelter belt along the north border of the property.

Both jobs were moderately strenuous and it felt great to work again.

Rehabilitation is ongoing at the Hotel Dieu Heart Clinic. This organization has my unequivocal approval. The staff are very professional (blood pressure checked five times per session, blood sugar checked before and after, medications carefully supervised, pulse rates monitored electronically throughout), but they are also immensely likeable. Bet goes shopping for the two hours after she drops me off, and she continues to remark at what a happy group — staff and patients — she encounters when she comes in at the end of a session.

It’s a four-month program with two sessions per week plus homework. The moderated floor exercises and stretches provide the discipline I couldn’t manage on my own (I’m lazy and hate to stretch) and the exercise machines enable us to train our hearts to handle heavier workloads.

I leave each session feeling lucky to have first-rate, free health care like this, especially with this group of very nice physiotherapists and nurses.